Rios, Guatemala. About Ten Years Ago Minor C

CHAPTER XI

THE AWAKENING OF GUATEMALA RUISING up the shores of Cen- tral America we will make no stop until we reach Puerto Bar- rios, Guatemala. About ten years ago Minor C. Keith began operations to provide Guatemala and Salvador with railroad communication to the Atlantic coast. This was in furtherance of his plan to connect the United States by rail with the Panama Canal Zone. He had completed the main lines of the railroad system in Costa Rica, and now assumed, with his accustomed energy, the nsskof opening two more nations to the commerce of the world. Guatemala and Salvador are the two most populous nations in Central America. The total population of Pan- ama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, British Honduras, Salvador, and Guatemala is roughly 4,600,000, of which Sal- vador contains about i 3O4O,, and Guatemala i,goo,000- all of Central America containing much less than the population of New York City, but vastly more potential wealth. Little Salvador, with its area of 7,225 square miles, has a density of population not touched by any nation in the New World. Its showing of '44 inhabitants to the square mile is fully five times that of the United States and surpasses that of well-settled Pennsylvania. Salvador has no coast on the Atlantic side and is therefore cut off entirely with direct communication with the great outside markets for its agricultural products. Only5 per cent of the population of Salvador are Cau.. I04 AWAKENING OF GUATEMALA 195 casian, and nearly all citizens of this small fraction are of Spanish descent. Fully 55 per cent of the population are pure-blooded Indians, members of several tribes, most of which have displayed progress compared with the average native Indian population of Central America. Comparative immunity in recent years from revolution and internal strife is largely responsible for this outcome. Nearly all of the soil

PUERTO BARRIOS, GUATEMALA, AND VICINITY

of Salvador is under cultivation. The Pacific slopes of Salvador and Guatemala are ideal for the cultivation of a score of tropical products, among which are coffee, indigo, sugar, tobacco, rice, cotton, cacao, pineapples, and all kinds of tropical fruits. On the great plateau of Guatemala are scores of towns and cities, including Guatemala City with a population of ioo,000 or more, the largest city in Central America. It was for the 196 CONQUEST OF THE TROPICS purpose of giving these populous and productive districts an outlet to the Atlantic and communication with the trade of the world that Mr. Keith planned a railroad which would connect Puerto Barrios with Guatemala City, capital of the Republic of Guatemala, and San Salvador, capital of the Republic of Salvador, with branches touching various ports on the Pacific, also eventual contact with Mexico and South America. Like all other Central American countries, with the possible exception of the colony of British Honduras, Guatemala had neglected and ignored its Caribbean lowlands. To the mass of the people of Guatemala, who lived in the highlands, the coasts were dreaded. They were the feared sections of the tierras calientes, the fiver-stricken hot lands. When the wealthy citizen of Guatemala went to Lisbon or Paris he es- caped byway of the Pacific coast, and thence to Panama or San Francisco, and from there to New York. It is only six years ago that he had the choice of any other route, and the American who had business in Guatemala City or San Sal- vadai first.bought a ticket for San Francisco or Panama City, then took a long and weary voyage along the Pacific coast, and finally was dropped from a sling to a lighter which rolled p'rilou4y in the swell which surges into the open roadsteads that take the place of harbors on most of the west shores of Central America. It seems strange, does it not, that the Guatemalan railroad was not constructed years and years ago? It seems such an obvious thing to do, yet our American tropics are filled with obvious opportunities and with political problems for which there are obvious remedies. We of the United States spend tens of millions of dollars on huge engineering plants intended to bring our deserts to cultivation, but our statesman- ship declines to glance south of the Rio Grande and of Te- huantepec, where uninhabited empires of rich soil are already provided with water and with the climate which must have existed in the Garden of Eden. When Mr. Keith and his associates decided to build a railroad from the Caribbean through these neglected countries the United Fruit Company agreed to undertake the AWAKENING OF GUATEMALA 197 banana development of sections of the uninhabited eastern lowlands. The Motagua River empties into the sea on the border line between Guatemala and Honduras, and is the longest and most important river in Central America. it has a broad and very fertile valley reaching more than two hundred miles toward the Pacific, and scores of branches are also natural centres of cultivation. For seventy miles or more back of its mouth the Motagua flows between lands well suited to banana cultivation, and in 1906 the United Fruit Company acquired by purchase

Typical scene at Guatemala railway station

tracts with a total acreage of 50,000. There was at once developed an experimental plantation of 1,250 acres. The test was successful, and an additional 747 acres were planted in 19o7. in the following year the banana plantings were increased to 5,080 acres, but the company had not acquired any additional tracts of land, it had demonstrated that banana cultivation in the Motagua Valley was practical and profitable, but it did not attempt to take advantage of this knowledge and of its position to monopolize all or any con- siderable part of the natural banana lands. It was not until 1910, five years after the original pus'- 198 CONQUEST OF THE TROPICS chase of 5o,000 acres, that the United Fruit Company increased its holdings by the purchase of an additional 30,49 acres, and since that year it has gradually acquired other tracts which gave it in 1913 a total of 126,189 acres, of which 27,122 were devoted to banana cultivation. The annual report of President Preston for 1913 places the cost of the Guatemalan development at $3,884,807.27, thus placing it fourth (in money invested) in the list of tropical divisions of the company, Costa Rica, Panama, and Co- lombia leading in the order named, with Jamaica in fifth place. Guatemala, however, stands third in the production of bananas. Puerto Barrios has deep water and an excellent natural harbor, lying well within the shelter of an island which forms the Gulf of Amatique, but at the present time Puerto Bar- rios is the least attractive and sanitary of all of the ports largely used by the United Fruit Company. Work is now in rapid progress which will change all this. The low site of the native town of Barrios will be raised and protected with a sea wall. The squalid huts which line the beach will disappear, and in their place will rise a fine hotel and office structures for the company. All of the adjacent swamps and lowlands have been reclaimed and made sanitary, and the reconstruction of the small native town will solve the only remaining sanitary problem which has harassed the company. A few miles across the gulf is the attractive town of Living- ston, situated at the mouth of the Rio Dulce, which connects Lake Izabal with the Caribbean. Lake Izabal is, next to Lake Nicaragua, the largest body of fresh water in Central America, and is navigable for small steamships nearly fifty miles inland. The Rio Dulce is a winding, narrow canyon of great height and surpassing tropical beauty. There is nothing else of this nature in the American tropics, and those who can spare the time will not regret a trip through the wonders of these overhanging cliffs crowned with palms and graced with clinging vines, the voyager finally emerging to the placid surface of Lake Izabal, its far shores fading into the deeper blue of distant mountains. AWAKENING OF GUATEMALA IPO

Leaving Barrios by train, we plunge almost immediately into the most perfect jungle I have ever seen in the tropics. On both sides of the track for mites is a tropical display of trees, plants, flowers, ferns, vines, and shrubs, all woven into an impenetrable network of a thousand hues so delicately blended that it would seem that some horticultural genius had spent a lifetime in arriving at this perfection. A New- port millionaire would give a fortune for an acre of this splen- did but worse than useless jungle. For miles it crashes its

ANTIGUA, GUATEMALA With the famous volcanoes Agua (water) and Fuego (are) in the distance pulsating beauty in the face of the beholder. Orchids which would drive a connoisseur to frenzy flame their delicate colors from thousands on thousands of trees. Other towering trees are veritable masses of huge flowers, some of them purple, others tantalizing shades of red, blue, orange, and violet. Why has no artist ever painted such a jungle? He could not do it justice, but he might try. I have never seen on canvas any creation which even pretended to depict in form and color the representation of this native tropical jungle. 200 CONQUEST OF THE TROPICS We leave the jungle and strike the Motagua River and the banana country. For fifty mites or more we run west and fairly parallel with the Motagua, with bananas on both sides of us most of the time. Some of these belong to the United Fruit Company and others are the property of inde- pendent growers. Many natives of Guatemala are owners of such plantations. The people of this republic stand in less fear of the coast lowlands than do the natives of the rest of Central America, but the trustworthy Jamaican negro does the most of the physical labor. For fifty miles we stop at town after town which had no existence prior to the advent of the banana industry. Some of them betray their newness and their American origin by their names, for instance the town of Dartmouth and the thriving town of Virginia. The latter is in the heart of the banana district, and is modern in every respect. It is a railroad division point. Here are well-equipped railroad shops, an electric lighting and power plant, an ice plant, steam laundry, and up-to-date stores with supplies fresh from the United States and abroad. The residential district contains streets and dwellings which would be a credit to any com- munity, yet all this was a wilderness only a few short years ago. The same is true of Dartmouth and of Quirigua. In the latter is located the wonderful new hospital erected by the United Fruit Company, which will be described else- where. The Guatemala Division of the United Fruit Company is in charge of a manager who maintains headquarters in Puerto Barrios and branch offices in Virginia and Guatemala City. The Guatemala Division is divided into three districts, El Pilar, Quirigua and Los Andes, each under a super- intendent, and each district divided into plantations of about i,000 acres each. These plantations are conducted by mandadors," or foremen, who are assisted by two time- keepers. All of these officials are white, and most of them are Americans. It is the duty of the mandador to give out and supervise the execution of the contracts with the work- men. In this district, as in all others conducted by the United AWAKENING OF GUATEMALA 201 Fruit Company, the labor of clearing new lands, keeping plantations in order, cutting bananas, etc., is done by contract, as I briefly explained in the chapter on Costa Rica. Only a theorist would dream of employing Jamaican negroes and Central American Indians to work on banana or other plantations by day wages. To quote a current phrase: "ft can't be done." These toilers lack that altruism which impels some men to work when they are not watched, and you cannot watch negroes and Indians scattered in a wilderness of banana plants which extends for miles in all directions. Hence a contract system which is absolutely fair to all concerned, and which operates to the com- plete satisfaction of themcn, who make a good living from it. William Joseph Showalter, in the National Geographic Mag- azine of February, 1913, writes entertainingly of "The Countries of the Caribbean," and has this to say concerning the United Fruit Company: "It is in Guatemala that one begins properly to appreciate the great civilizing influence of the United Fruit Company. That corporation has many thousands of acres of banana plantations Guatemalan Indian musicians along the lowlands of the Mota- gua River and extending to the Caribbean Sea. It pays its laborers a dollar a day, eleven times as much as the laws of Guatemala say shall constitute a day's wage. One can readily imagine what a boon this is to poor Indians who have formerly been paid only nine cents. Yet the United Fruit Company voluntarily pays this wage, and is able to give work to every Guatemalan Indian who applies for a job. "It is the advent of such organizations as these—power- ful enough to protect their own interests when disputes CONQUEST OF THE TROPICS arise with the local governments - that spells the economic salvation of these countries and promises an honest wage to the laboring classes. I hold no brief for the United Fruit Company, but it must be said that that great corporation has done more for Central America than all other agencies combined." There are tasks in the Guatemalan banana industry in which the wage system prevails and in which, as Mr. Showalter states, the natives receive pay many times that dreamed of before the United Fruit Company undertook the development of these neglected tracts of land, but the contract laborer who has a fair degree of intelligence and is willing to work from six to ten hours a day is in receipt of an income which ranges from $1.25 to $2.50 a day - the latter figure representing what the averageGuatemalan Indian formerly received for a month's hard work. There is every likelihood that the paymentof good wages, coupled with sanitary surroundings and civilizjr)g influences, will breed in Guatemala and Inaitof Central America strong, self-reliant, and progressive races of people, and with these traits will come that sense of responsibility and Guatemalan Indian dandy real patriotism which ever serves as the foundation for orderly government and national advancement. Men who are forced to work for nine cents a day or any small multiple of that wage have no interest in government and nothing to amuse a sentiment of national patriotism. Having nothing to lose and all to gain - they naturally turn to revolutions and anarchy. This is the secret of the sad conditions which inevitably lead to political lawlessness in many sections AWAKENING OF GUATEMALA 203 south of the Rio Grande. Central America needs an influx of more corporations that are able and willing to "exploit" her natives by paying them eleven or more times the pre- vailing legal rates of wages, and whose productive operations will pour a flood of revenue into impoverished national treasuries. There is no other peaceful solution of this problem, and most unbiased critics agree with Mr. Show- alter that the United Fruit Company "has done more for Central America than all other agencies combined." The view from the roof of the hospital in Quirigua is the most impressive in Central America from a banana stand- point. The hospital is on a hill, with the railroad at its base. Beyond the tracks is the front rank of a row of bananas which extends as far as the eye can reach to the east and west. Miles away to the south is the Motagua River, swinging in a curve almost to the Honduras line, but it is buried in a forest of bananas which extends to our south in an unbroken mass a distance of ten miles or more. Beneath the rays of a tropical sun this vast reach of vivid green banana fronds is an impressive sight. Here and there a spiral of steam or smoke indicates the location of a railway train on tracks which place all parts of this plantation within easy access of the workers. To the south frowns the jagged skyline of a Honduranean range of mountains, with extinct volcanoes rearing ugly cones into a clear sky. Their fertile lower slopes would grow the tropical output for a million of the consumers of the United States, but they are practically uninhabited, unexplored, without any authorized name, and known only to the few Indians who roam about them. They are ;C part of the unused and neglected assets of a world which complains of the increasing cost of food products, and which does not know enough to utilize the lands which a generous nature has provided. Centuries ago a mighty race of people lived in the valleys of the Motagua and for hundreds of miles along the now deserted coast lands of Guatemala and Honduras which the United Fruit Company is quickening to step with the new civilization. There are no legends, no traditions, and no 904 CONQUEST OF THE TROPICS understandable records of this people, but within the tangle of the jungle and partly buried beneath its dead fecundity are the ruins of cities, temples, and monuments which declare more vividly than printed words the tale of their progress and achievements. The lowlands, which now hold such tenors for the igdorant and physically deficient Indian tribes of Guatemala, did not deter their worthy predecessors of centuries ago from master-

Indian marimba, drum, and flute (Guatemala) ing the sanitary problems of these valleys. They knew that these fertile lands were perfectly fitted to support in comfort and luxury large masses of people, and it was here that they lived and wrought, and finally faded from memory and history, without leaving behind any translated sign of what caused their disappearance. In a jungle belonging to the United Fruit Company are the famous ruins of Quirigua, only a few miles from the town AWAKENING OF GUATEMALA Los of that name. In the extension of its banana development the United Fruit Company acquired the tract on which the centre of the ancient metropolis was located, and the company has extended substantial financial aid to archaeologists who have performed the work of exploration and excavation under the direction of the School of American ArchRology. It is the aim of the United Fruit Company to clear all the seventy-five acres which contain the wonderful ruins off temples and the scores of huge and superbly carved monoliths which rise out of the encroaching jungle. This will result in the creation of a tropical park distinct in its attrac- tions from any in the world. The March issue of the National Geographic Magazine of 1913 contained well illustrated articles on the ruins of Qui- rigua by W. F. Sands, formerly United States Minister to Guatemala, and also one by Sylvanus Griswold Morley, Assistant Director of the Quirigua Expedition of 1912, which executed most of the work of bringing the buried temples to light. I quote passages of their interesting observations and deductions. Mr. Sands expresses this theory:

"With the opening of the Quirigua ruins in Guatemala a most important addition is being made to the material now available for study of the races which once occupied the low, hot, coast land between Copân, in Honduras, through the Guatemala littoral, Petén, and Quirigua Roo to Yucatan. "Master races they were, as were once the Brahmans of Indo-China. They conquered in easy battle the fever-rid- den natives and lived thenceforth upon the country and its population. "They taught them nothing of their higher civilization, but ground them back to the earth, until inbreeding, idleness, and fever took their toll, and in their turn they were overthrown and perished, leaving nothing but the elaborate monuments and massive buildings which, covered with the mould of centuries of quick-springing and quick-decaying tropical forest, form the 'Indian mounds' so plentiful in this region. "The theory of an alien sacerdotal aristocracy, claiming Glimpse of the ruins of Quirigua AWAKENING OF GUATEMALA 207 divine descent because of superior development, and ruling an untutored, conquered race, while it offers no suggestion as to-origin, may at least explain why no memory of their rule remains among the inhabitants of these regions to-day. Knowledge of every kind was kept from the subject races, and with the downfall the slave fled from the ancient holy places, and the symbols of arrogance, cruelty, and power were shunned for centuries as an abomination. "It Is not necessary to hold with Brasseur de Bourbourg that all these countries (the 'Hinterland' of Atlantis) were submerged when the island-continent was destroyed al- though his theory is immensely attractive - and that after remaining under the sea for an unknown period they rose once more and were peopled from the highlands. "It is simpler to imagine, so long as we have nothing defi- nite to go on, and one man's tale is as good as another's, that some such catastrophe took place as is so charmingly told in Sir Hugh Clifford's 'Tragedy of Angkor,' and that the degenerate rulers of the coast were suddenly shown to their subjects by some attack of the hardier mountain tribes no longer to be irresistible, no longer divine, but only very feeble men, and so were wiped out utterly and effectually, as would have been the first weak settlement on our own shores without succor from the mother country. . . - "In the spring of 1910 the tract of land surrounding the monuments, on the left bank of the Motagua River, was opened for planting by the United Fruit Company, and a park left about the principal ruins. The company gener- ously supplied labor and many other facilities for clearing this park of underbrush and cleaning the stones, so that at last an organized study was made possible under the guid- ance of Prof. Edgar L. Hewett, Director of the School of American Archzology, and of Mr. Sylvanus Griswold Mor- ley. Both of these gentlemen have spent many months in exploration and detailed examination, and under Mr. Hew- ett's direction the institute has an opportunity for study hardly paralleled in the history of American archaeological research. . . - "The ruins lie on low, fiat land, flooded and renewed each I.

& a C

U IC B C AWAKENING OF GUATEMALA 109 rainy season by the Motagua's overflow - rich, inexhaust- ible alluvial soil and ideal for banana planting. A more inspiring spot can hardly be imagined. Under the immense ceiba and other coast trees (o and So Feet to the lowest branches, each branch as big as a thirty-year-old'maple and hung with orchids and Spanish moss) has grown up a thicket of palms and fern trees, forming, when the underbrush is cleared, arched forest galleries impossible to describe. "From the ceiba and mahogany trees drop long, leafless, snake-like black vine stems - one, the 'water-vine,' containing a quart of clear,pure water to every foot,which spurts forth in a refreshing stream when cut. It is a real, thirst- quenching water, drawn up from the soil and filtered through the pores of the plant; not a sap, as one might suppose. "Through the arches of the palms suddenly appears a group of mounds, still overgrown with masses of foliage, and beyond these an avenue of great stones, carved monoliths leading to some - as yet - invisible altar or temple. From each pillar stares - impassive, gloomy, or sullen - a gigan- tic face. Each figure is crowned with a tall feather head- dress; is belted with a short, embroidered skirt like the sacrificial apron worn by Korean eunuchs in the Heaven sacrifice - naked, with heavy ornaments at wrist and ankle. "On the sides of the stones are columns of glyphs, until now undecipherable, but nearly all plain and well preserved, and, when the cue shall have been found, easily legible. The faces are well carved, of a heavy, full type, with thick lips, narrow eyes, and thin, carefully pointed Egyptian beards, like the Sargent Pharaoh in the Boston Library. Several show a remarkably cruel strength, which lessens with each set of pillars to a weak, purposeless, degenerate type - loose-lipped, chinless, and imbecile. Among them are to be found the most perfect pieces of carving I have yet seen among American antiquities. "It is not to be supposed that either this place or Copin was an isolated group of temples. It is more likely that they were centres, and that similar remains will be uncovered in the near future in the course of deforestation preliminary to banana planting." One of the superb monoliths of Quirigua AWAKENING OF GUATEMALA ell It is thus known that the banana plantations surrounding the park were once the site of a great and populous city, of which these ruined temples and towering monuments.were the centre. Beneath the rustling fronds.of this wilderness of bananas lie the ashes of a race whose rise and fall are lost to history, and the people of our day gaze with lack of compre- hension on the mighty works of men who had risen to a high civilization in an age when our Saxon ancestors were still members of savage tribes - tribes which did not come in contact with civilization until it was beaten into them by the all-conquering Roman Empire. And we, in our pride and folly, vainly imagine that our works and our boasted progress may not some day be obliter- ated by flaccid, pampered idleness and degeneracy, and we decline to entertain the thought that some future race will uncover the ruins of the Woolworth Building and speculate on what occasioned the depressions caused by the caving in of what now are New York's subways. Protest it as we may, we have no assurance that it is within our power to rear or create anything which will convey to the people of the coming ages the story of our petty achievements and of our boasted triumphs. Destruction may come from within or from without, from this earth of ours or from the unknowable forces of the nether universe, but the ruins of great cities which antedated buried Babylon and Nm- eveh, the crumbling debris of mighty cities which crowned the plateaus of Peru, the pyramids of Mexico, which were old before those of Egypt were begun, the magnificent wreckage Of palaces where once lorded the rulers of Yucatan, and the orchid-festooned temples of Quirigua all warn us that "we too shall pass away," and that we shall leave behind no understandable sign of why we encumbered the earth. Mr. Morley has another theory 30 account for the ruins of Ouirigua, and he thus expresses it in his article in the National Geographic Magazine of March, 1913t - "Quirigua was one of the older centres of the great Maya civilization, which flourished in southern Mexico, Guate- mala, and Honduras during the first fifteen centuries of the 212 CONQUEST OF THE TROPICS Christian Era. Judging from the dated monuments which are erected in its several courts and plazas, this ancient American metropolis was abandoned during the first half of the sixth century A. D. "Toward the close of the sixth century the Mayas moved out from the older centres of their civilization in the south

An ornate carving in Quirigua and migrated northward into Yucatan. Here in the stress of colonizing a new and unfamiliar land, the remembrance of their former homes gradually faded, until Quirigua, along with many another southern city, became only a memory, a tradition. Finally, long before the discovery of America, even the tradition of its former existence had passed from the minds of men." AWAKENING OF GUATEMALA 218 I cannot readily subscribe to this theory. Races do not abandon a metropolis because of the founding of relatively adjacent colonies, and the ruins of Yucatan are only a few hundred miles from the remains of the presumably deserted Quirigua. Taking courage from Mr. Sands' frank confes- sion that "we have nothing to go on, and one man's tale is as good as another's," I take this opportunity to exploit a theory of my own. Scattered all through Guatemala and Mexico are tribes of so-called Indians who speak dialects which contain many words of Japanese origin. There are tribes in Mexico with languages in which more than half of their vocabulary is Japanese. It is a fact that a native of Japan can enter vil- lages of such tribes and converse readily with their inhabitants in their own tongue. Even more significant is the fact that there is a marked physical resemblance between them and the modern Japanese. What is the logical deduction from this unquestioned fact? It is that pans or all of Mexico and Central America were once settled from Japan, or - which is equally possible - Japan was originally settled by some great migration or conquest originating from Central America. Mr. Sands speaks of the Egyptian characteristics of the faces and the figures carved on these monoliths, but he and other students will be compelled to admit that all of these carvings depart from a conventional rule seldom violated by Egyptian artists or sculptors. On this point I quote the New international Encyclopzdia as follows:

"The main attempt (of Egyptian artists) was to show as much as possible to the beholder. Therefore, in relief, figures were spread out as on a map: the head in profile (but the eye in front view), the shoulders full front, the arms and hands in profile, the trunk three-quarters, the legs and feet in profile."

Now the carvings of human faces and figures as displayed by the monoliths and temple decorations of Quirigua do not conform to a single one of sAne specifications of Egyptian an. That art knew nothing of perspective and little of proportion. 214 CONQUEST OF THE TROPICS It was confined almost entirely to distorted profiles. 'nail of the carvings recovered from Quirigua there is not a one which is executed in profile, all of them being in full or :iz ree-quaner face. More than that, the faces are far more Japanese than Egyptian

One of the mysteries of Quirigua's ruin, in expression, and several of them have the inwardly tilted eyebrows peculiar to the Japanese and Chinese races. Having proved this much, I might as well explain the mys- tery of the abandonment of the capital of Quirigua and of its surrounding empire. Some Napoleon of this tropical em- AWAKENING OF GUATEMALA 915 pire learned of the existence of the island of Japan, and went forth with a vast army to conquer it. Whether he went by land up the warm coasts of the present United States and Canada into Alaska and thence by ships to the Asiatic main- land, or if he went by ships or steamers from some lower Pacific port, or if he went by flying machines is a matter of slight consequence in the determination of the truth of my

Getting ready for a fiesta theory. The main point is that these people were kin to the Japanese, and they went there either to fight or because they were dissatisfied with their former tropical surroundings. In any event they left and did not come back, and that is the reason that the United Fruit Company found the ruins of Quirigua inhabited with baboons, herds of peccary, tapirs, jaguars, and other denizens of a deserted wilderness. 216 CONQUEST OF THE TROPICS Having settled this momentous question to my own satisfaction, if not to that of those who hold other theories, we will leave the ruins of Quirigua to the ghosts of an unknown race, and step out into the lightof an age which is so busy trying to make a living that it has little time to solve the mysteries of vanished ages. There is every reason to believe that the enterprises set on foot by Minor C. Keith and his associates in cooperation with the United Fruit Company will pave the way for the lifting of Guatemala and Salvador to the plane made possible .brtheir varied natural resources. It is the settled policy of the heads of these enterprises to lend every reasonable aid and encouragement to Americans who are attracted to these countries, but it is only fair to warn the intended agriculturist that an undertaking in any part of Central America requires much more capital than does farming in the United States. Let us glance briefly at the countries in which the operations of the United Fruit Company are of lesser importance at the present time. The traveller from New Orleans who takes the boats of the United Fruit Company makes his first stop at Belize, the capital and only town of consequence in British Hon- duras. This little British possession is an oasis of peace in a desert which for centuries has been swept by storms of revolution and lawlessness. The happy and prosperous inhabitants of British Honduras do not have to worry over the problem of "working out their own destiny," this detail devolving on the officials of the political party which happens to be in power in London. Most of the inhabitants of Belize and a majority of those of British Honduras are negroes, whose ancestors migrated there from Jamaica and other islands of the West Indies. If they are denied any of the rights of freedom, political and otherwise, they are utterly unconscious of it, and there is no more likelihood of a " volution" in their country than there is in Massachusetts. When the student contrasts the conditions which exist in Spanish Honduras with those which prevail in British Honduras he is likely to regret that England did not grab most of Central America a century AWAKENING OF GUATEMALA 217 and a half ago and bequeath to it the order and prosperity for which our British brothers are so willing to fight. There seem to be no opportunities for banana development on a large scale in British Honduras. The United Fruit Company has about t,00 acres of banana cultivations in the southern part of the country, the product being exported from Puerto Barrios. British Honduras is fitted for many otherprofitable kinds of agriculture, but its development has

Sntttscene in Guatemala City been retarded by the bad reputation which has been given to all of the vast section south of the RioGrande through the suc- cessive outbreaks which have harassed Mexico and the revolution centres of Central America. When peace is enforced on her neighbors, little British Honduras will come to her own. Nicaragua produces about z,joo,000 bunches of bananas annually, but these are all imported and handled by competi- tors of the United Fruit Company. The latter owns a 218 CONQUEST OF THE TROPICS tract of 193,000 acres of land in Nicaragua, but has notas yet extended its plantation development to this rather ebul- lient republic. Nations with natural resources prosper about in proportion as they maintain stable conditions of government, and the sole reason why Costa Rica is more prosperous than Nicaragua is that she deserves to be so. The United Fruit Company has about 49,000 acres of land in Honduras, and holds 17,000 acres under lease, 9,000 of which consist of banana plantations. These plantations are near Puerto Cortez, which has one of the finest harbors along the coasts of Central America. Puerto Cortez is in the extreme west of Honduras, not more than forty-five miles from Puerto Barrios, Guatemala. The Caribbean coast line of Honduras extends east and west, and this republic is almost shut off from the Pacific shores, having only a few miles of frontage on Fonseca Bay. Honduras is the least developed of all of the Central American countries, and this is true despite the fact that it has wonderful natural resources and possibilities. It has had six so-called revolutions in the last fifteen years. That is the principal reason why its population is less now than it was fifty years ago. No railroads connect her interior cities with her coasts, and her capital, Tegucigalpa, less than 250 miles from Puerto Cortez, is one of the least known, most isolated and inaccessible places of political importance on the face of the globe. It requires three weeks for mule trains to cross from the Caribbean to the Pacific, over trails and comparatively low mountain passes which a railroad train would negotiate in twelve hours or less. But the United Fruit Company is displaying practical confidence in the future of Honduras. It has faith that the completion of the Panama Canal will prove the means of calling the attention of the world to the possibilities which long have lain dormant in such nations as Honduras. It is inevitable that the pressure of population and of capital seeking investment will not halt at the handicaps which have been reared by weak and inefficient governments. There is no room for hermit kingdoms or military despotisms north of the Panama Canal Zone. AWAKENING OF GUATEMALA 219 Honduras has had no chance to show what she can do. Without railroads penetrating her fertile interior plateaus there is no incentive to raise crops which cannot reach the seacoast. Years ago Honduras authorized a huge bond issue for the purpose of constructing such a railroad from Puerto Cortez. The bonds were sold. Fifty-seven miles of narrow- gauge road was constructed over fairly level land south from Puerto Cortez. The actual cost should not have exceeded a mile, but corrupt public officials in conspiracy with equally corrupt English contractors pocketed nearly $a,000,- 000 a mile for this wretched bit of railroad construction —one of the most audacious, stupendous, and criminal specimens of public robbery in all of the history of plunder. A later chapter on the sanitary work conducted by the United Fruit Company includes a description of the work now in progress in Spanish Honduras.